Our People…

Paul Hope – Technical Director and co-founder of Virustatic

Technical Director and co- founder of Virustatic

Educated at St. Ambrose College, Cheshire and MIL where he studied Philosophy and Social Anthropology. After serving in the Corps of Royal Engineers Paul went on to manage laboratories in Qatar, the UAE and Libya. His innovations include his successfully patented MBT Coupler, a worldwide success in high strength reinforced structures. In 2005 he formed Family Genetics to test DNA on a number of television programmes including Who Do You Think You Are? He has invented and developed a number of products associated with body temperature control, including work with the South African Mine Rescue Service, to design a suit to control body temperature. Paul is interested in pandemic influenza control and has been researching methods of pathogen control for many years. In 2009, he entered collaboration with Manchester University Biology department C0EBio3 to utilise glycoproteins to trap viruses on substrates to control both human and animal pathogens in air and blood flows. This research has generated patent applications regarding anti-viral glycoproteins entrapment of pathogens.

George Phillips MBA, BSc (Hons), FCMA, FCCA, MCMI

Non-Executive Director.

For the last twenty years, George has worked at VWR (a $4bn, 7000 headcount global group of companies that supplies laboratory chemicals, equipment, clothing and furniture). He’s currently a Finance Director and travels extensively throughout Europe and North America ensuring that the subsidiaries’ finance departments support the accounting and controlling requirements of the business. He has turned around the finance departments of subsidiaries in eight countries, recruiting in that time seven country finance directors. One of his recent projects was leading the transfer of $2bn per year of business to a new global banking partner, releasing $54m in cash and Company Information saving $400k in bank charges in 2015.

Frank Hamill

Communications & Strategy Director

Frank has spent the last 36 years working in Central Government in senior strategic leadership and management roles. Frank has considerable experience of working across central government with Ministers and on press, publicity, marketing and he led the launch of the Government’s Children’s Plan. During this time Frank also worked at night to successfully graduate from Keele University in Industrial Relations and Employment Law. Frank left the civil service in June 2015 and set up AFJ Business Solutions Limited, as well as joining the board of virustatic.

Kieron Brown

Operations Director and co-founder of virustatic

Kieron studied Mechanical Engineering and Sports Science at Llandrillo College in North Wales where he lived with his family. As a passionate sportsman, Kieron was involved heavily in rugby, boxing, swimming and cycling. From schoolboy champion to semi-professional rugby, his sporting ambition led him to win Wales’ Strongest Man on three separate occasions. He appeared several times on S4C TV during the live coverage of the competition. He then moved into management roles, including head of Security for Whitegate Leisure, Financial Consultancy and Regional Sales. Moving to the Manchester area in the late 1990s he met Paul Hope where he became involved with Manchester University and virustatic.

Our Scientific Partners

Dr Ian Rowles

University of Manchester

Since 2008 Ian has been at The Centre of Excellence for Biocatalysis, Biotransformation and Biocatalytic Manufacture (CoEBio3), which brings together academia and industry to supply research, training and development services to create excellence in Industrial Biotechnology. Formally a knowledge transfer Fellow in Biocatalysis, Ian has both a PhD in Chemical Biology and a BSc Hons in Molecular Biology.

Professor Sabine Flitsch

University of Manchester

Sabine holds a Chair in Chemical Biology at the University of Manchester in the School of Chemistry. Her research group is housed in the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre (MIB). Sabine graduated from University of Münster in Germany in 1982 with a first class Diploma in Chemistry. She received a Michael Wills scholarship to study for a D.Phil. at the University of Oxford, took up a DAAD Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), followed by a lectureship at Oxford in Organic Chemistry for 6 years. Her other career highlights include the Zeneca Research Award in 1996, the Glaxo Wellcome Award for Innovative Chemistry in 1997 and the RSC Interdisciplinary Prize Winner 2014 for her significant contributions in biological chemistry, in particular carbohydrate chemistry and glycobiology.